Raison d'Être
by auPHE
Summary: Sora could feel him, but only in the sense that he couldn’t feel the absence of some piece of himself. So, for the time being, he just had to guess that Roxas was there and be happy with that. :AkuRoku oneshot, nonAU, postgame: Late for 8/13/08.


Stupid second chapter of Invisible; halfway through, then my inspiration quits on me. So, here's a nice one-shot to (hopefully) satisfy whoever may be waiting on that.

**Kingdom Hearts and its characters are the property of Disney and Square Enix.**

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Sometimes, Sora wondered what Roxas was like.

The only times he had actually seen and spoken to his Nobody were short, and the blond had said very little each time. Was he angry at Sora? _Could _he even be angry? Did they like the same things, would they act similarly? …What had Roxas done during his short time of existence?

Sora guessed that Roxas still existed inside him somewhere, in the dark recesses of his mind. He could feel him, but only in the sense that he couldn't feel the absence of some piece of himself—and he didn't even know if there _would _be an absence if Roxas were gone. So, for the time being, he just had to guess that Roxas was there and be happy with that.

Sometimes, Sora felt guilty.

He had stolen Roxas' life, his existence-without-a-heart. Riku always told him _not _to feel bad, that Roxas was much better where he was rather than going through what Nobodies experienced just by existing, but Sora couldn't help it. If Roxas was still Roxas, still had some form of conscious thought, then he was trapped in his mind with no escape.

Sometimes, Sora became moody and depressed, and those times were the worst of all because he knew it wasn't himself feeling that way.

Sora often tried to do little things that he thought would make Roxas feel better or a little more at home. He forced himself to acquire a taste for sea-salt ice cream, knowing that Roxas would eat them all of the time (or so Riku told him) and hoping that the Nobody could experience what he did and vicariously enjoy living. At least once a week, Sora would watch the sunset, sometimes with Riku and Kairi, occasionally with just the one or the other, but most often by himself.

The most extreme example of Sora trying to alter his lifestyle to make it seem more like Roxas' was when he dated Reno. Reno immediately reminded him of Axel, with red hair only a shade darker and tattoos under the eyes that were red crescents instead of black diamonds, and the entire time Sora dated him (despite how wrong it felt in his heart) he could tell neither Roxas nor Riku was happy with him. It was easy to see why Roxas would be upset, but _Riku?_ It quickly became clear when he confronted Sora, telling him that it wasn't right to ruin his own life just for Roxas' sake. They'd argued, Sora ran, but in the end Riku found him on the play island and apologized; he had just been worried. Sora immediately forgave him, 'cause it was _Riku_, after all.

Despite having just gone through all of that, Sora had to break it off with Reno after only two weeks; the insane nightmares he'd get every single night were way too much for him to handle, and they were only getting worse. In them, Sora would see Axel dying, over and over, sometimes screaming in pain and sometimes sneering with a hateful look in his eye. The nightmares never fully went away, even after he'd stopped seeing Reno, and Sora knew he must have triggered something in either his mind or Roxas'.

Once, he encountered his Nobody in one of them.

For what must have been about the ninetieth time, Sora figured, he was having the exact same dream. Again, Axel and him were facing off against the largest groups of Dusks he'd ever seen, and again Axel looked over his shoulder at him and gave the cocky, arrogant smile he was so well known for.

"_Watch this."_

Then, it was over before it ever really began, the inferno dying down to nothing… and Axel fell. Sora knew what was going to happen, that he'd run to Axel's side and watch the Organization's proud Number VIII, The Flurry of Dancing Flames, fade.

He was understandably startled, then, when another form—no, a _body_—ripped itself from his. Sora saw blond hair, a black cloak, and startling cobalt eyes the same as his before this new person had rushed to Axel's side and knelt over him. He pulled the redhead into a hug, and Sora could tell that they were both speaking even though he couldn't hear the words. After a few moments, the wisps of darkness that Nobodies bled increased in amount, and in the end nothing really changed as Axel faded yet again.

This time, though, the dream didn't end there, leaving Sora and the blond—who had by now stood up—amid all of the rainbow lights, giving them plenty of time to examine each other. He had met Roxas face-to-face once before, when his Nobody had pulled him inside of their heart and they'd fought, though he'd never exactly told anyone about it (not out of secrecy—he'd just plain forgotten to mention it). They weren't fighting this time, so obviously something had changed… or nothing had.

"Roxas…" The name provoked some sort of reaction in the cloaked blond, as he flinched slightly before walking to stand just in front of his Somebody.

"Sora." Roxas inclined his head in acknowledgement, but said nothing further.

The silence was loud—loud and uncomfortable and _silent_, but Roxas didn't seem interested in doing anything about it and Sora couldn't think of anything to say. He opened his mouth a couple times to speak, but always changed his mind and closed it quickly. Finally, he found something to say after several minutes, at least, had passed.

"I'm sorry," Sora said quietly, meeting Roxas' eyes. He was startled to suddenly realize that they _didn't_ in fact share the exact same eye color. While logic (or was it romanticism?) said that Roxas' eyes should be a lighter color, a shade closer to the ice that he emulated in personality, they were actually darker and deeper, contrasting the paler skin and light hair.

Roxas blinked at him, obviously slightly confused as to what Sora was apologizing for, but then it seemed to click for him. His eyebrows furrowed a little, and he looked away from Sora's stare.

"I wanted to hate you," Roxas stated very quietly, but Sora was so focused on him that there was no way it would've gone unheard. The blond glanced at him for a moment, before continuing, "In fact, I think there's some part of me… us… that still wants to, but I can't. It's like trying to hate one of your limbs—or, for a better analogy, a shadow trying to hate the person who casts it." Roxas gave him a bitter look that stopped any protest Sora might've had in his throat. "It didn't work; I actually _couldn't_ hate you, and for the first time it wasn't because I was missing a heart."

Instead of continuing to avoid Sora's eyes, Roxas looked up and stared straight at him intensely. "I realized, though, that I shouldn't even be wanting to in the first place. It wasn't your fault, and you didn't send DiZ and Riku after me to destroy whatever life I had for some selfish reason."

"Riku's really sorry about that, by the way!" Sora broke in. Riku was his best friend—and lately, something more than that to him, but this wasn't the time or place to be thinking about that—and he didn't want his other half to be angry at said best friend for something he did out of misjudgment. "He didn't know that he was doing anything wrong, and he feels awful about it now!"

"Sora, you don't need to lie to me," Roxas said bluntly, and the other looked at him confusedly. He noticed this, and raised an eyebrow. "Or maybe you're not the one doing the lying…?"

Somehow, Sora caught the implication of that statement. "Riku wouldn't lie to me!"

"Yes he would, if he thought that it would make you happy," Roxas pointed out. Sora opened his mouth to argue, but the Nobody held up a hand for him to wait a moment; he seemed to be quite good at getting others to listen to him quietly without protesting. "I'm not saying that he _likes_ lying to you, even if it's a white lie, or that he doesn't even _want_ to see me in the same light that you do, but Riku can't agree and say that he wishes that he hadn't retrieved me, because even I can tell that Riku would do it again and again if it had the slightest chance of saving you."

Sora fell silent at that. "…How do you know this stuff? Do you, like, experience everything I do or something?"

"I see and hear what you do most of the time, but I can choose not to; that way, you can have your, uh… _privacy_." Roxas smiled crookedly.

"_Roxas!_" Sora turned red and he slapped the blond's upper arm, and when the other only laughed the color on Sora's face deepened. Roxas grew serious again quickly, though.

"You have to tell him, Sora."

Said brunet stared, becoming increasingly confused. "Wha…? What does _that_ mean?"

"I know you love him—you can't hide _that _from me, I _am_ you," Roxas said. Sora blushed, but didn't deny it. "And even when you aren't paying attention, I am, and trust me—a blind monkey could tell that he feels the same."

Desperately wanting to change the topic, Sora threw out, "Well, what about you and Axel?!"

As soon as he mentioned the redhead's name, Roxas stiffened, and Sora wished that he hadn't said that, that he could erase the words that seemed to still hang in the air.

"Axel doesn't matter," Roxas said flatly, eyes cold.

"…That's not true." It wasn't. If Sora couldn't lie to Roxas, then it worked in reverse; Roxas had no chance of being able to deceive Sora, the keyblade master and the boy who probably understood the heart better than any before him. Still, he chose to remain silent. "If Axel hadn't mattered and you didn't care about him, then I wouldn't be having these nightmares still—and they're not mine, Roxas. They're _yours_."

"He doesn't matter because I don't have the _right_ to care about him," Roxas snapped, running over the tail end of the other's very small speech. Sora stopped whatever else he had been going to say, and listened. Fists clenched and trembling, Roxas averted his eyes yet again. "I left him behind. I didn't listen to him when he tried to stop me and told me that he'd miss me, and I didn't listen to him when he came to get me from the virtual Twilight Town program. Instead, I fought him and ran like the selfish bastard that I am, and now he's _dead_," Roxas choked out, trying not to sob.

"You didn't kill him," Sora quietly said, understanding the emotion underneath what his Nobody was saying. "If you had stayed with the Organization, you would've continued to help them and the worlds would be doomed."

"I should've asked him to come with me!" Roxas shouted, his eyes watering.

"And if he'd done that, the Organization would have killed you both, and then where would I be?" Sora demanded. "Neither Axel nor I would've wanted you dead, too!"

Roxas stared in shock and blinked, forcing out a tear that ran down his cheek and fell to the ground. "I loved him," he sobbed desperately. "I fucking _loved_ him, but I couldn't tell him even though I knew he must've felt the same. I didn't have the _heart_," Roxas let out a bitter laugh at the pun, "to tell him that he was the reason I existed, and now I just don't have the option to tell him that he still is." Sora sighed, getting rid of whatever anger may have built up slightly.

"Roxas, there's no way you and Axel _could_ have been together, there's no way you _will_ be together, and _you need to accept that_," he gently broke it to him, hating every word. It was the truth, though, one that Roxas had to hear.

And he did.

And Roxas broke.

Sometimes, Sora would watch the stars with Riku, the one he loved, and remember the time when his Nobody still had a name and a love of his own. It really was a shame, though, that he had forgotten what they were.

* * *

**Authoress Corner**

"What do you mean it's too tragic?!" Phe rants. "That's what AkuRoku really _is!_ We fangirls just tend to forget it because they're too damn adorable of a couple to constantly remind ourselves that canonically they never had a chance!" She throws her hands up in the air dramatically as she paces back and forth in front of you.

Finally, she just sighs and throws herself onto an armchair. "Whatever. Can this still count for AkuRoku Day, even if it's three or so days late?" You shrug, and then ask her a question.

"Why's it called 'Raison d'Être'?" She stares. "Are you really that dumb?" You glare at her, and she laughs. "No need to get snarky! It's a french phrase meaning 'reason to exist', or literally, 'reason to be'. I think you can puzzle the deeper meaning out from there, 'cause trust me: there is one."


End file.
